Auburn offensive coordinator Chip Lindsey and Auburn head coach Gus Malzahn talk as the their team warms up before taking on Georgia at Sanford Stadium in Athens, Ga., on Saturday, Nov. 10, 2018. Jake Crandall

AUBURN — The phrase, uttered by Gus Malzahn, has been a constant after almost every game Auburn has played this season, win or lose.

“We have to run the football better.”

The head coach said it after the win over Washington, the loss to LSU, the wins over Arkansas and Southern Miss, the loss at Mississippi State and the win over Texas A&M. He said it again after the Tigers’ 27-10 loss at Georgia on Saturday.

“We have to run the football better.”

That hasn’t happened yet, and Auburn has already played 10 games this season. There have been good performances — 429 yards against FCS Alabama State, 269 at Ole Miss — but those are the outliers, not the baseline.

Auburn rushed for 107 yards on 20 carries during Saturday’s loss at Sanford Stadium. The 5.1 yards per attempt marked the team’s third-highest this season, behind only the wins over the Hornets (7.3) and Rebels (5.9). The 20 attempts marked the program’s lowest since an Oct. 7, 2000 loss at Mississippi State, when it had just 19 (for 18 yards).

In nine games against FBS opponents, the Tigers are averaging 118.9 rushing yards per game and 3.6 yards per carry on 33 attempts and have scored 12 touchdowns on the ground. Each of those numbers ranks either last or second-to-last in the SEC. None ranks better than 91st out of 130 FBS teams nationally.

Taking all 10 games into consideration, Auburn is averaging 149.9 rushing yards per game, 4.2 yards per carry on 35.6 attempts per game. If those numbers hold, they would go down as the worst on the Plains since 2012 and the worst of Malzahn’s career as a college coach, which also includes stops at Arkansas, Tulsa and Arkansas State over the past 13 seasons.

Malzahn has never had an offense average fewer than 172.9 rushing yards per game (Tulsa, 2007), 4.3 yards per carry (Tulsa, 2007) or 38.5 attempts per game (Arkansas, 2006). His lowest numbers at Auburn came in his last season as offensive coordinator 2011, when the Tigers averaged 182.3 yards per game and 4.4 yards per carry on 41.2 attempts.

So why has this season been so different?

“I think it’s a lot of different factors involved,” Malzahn said prior to the game at Georgia. “I can tell you earlier in the year, I can talk about the youth and inexperience. But like I said, about halfway through you’ve got reps now. And I can talk about the inexperience of running backs, the youth, but we’re getting to a point now where we need to be more effective.”

That youth an experience at two key positions on offense was among the biggest story lines surrounding the Tigers going into the season. They were replacing four senior starters up front in Braden Smith, Austin Golson, Casey Dunn and Darius James, as well as a pair of 1,000-yard rushers in Kerryon Johnson and Kamryn Pettway.

But Auburn has had to replace talented players at those positions plenty of times over the past few years. Whether it has been Tre Mason, Cameron Artis-Payne, Peyton Barber, Pettway or Johnson carrying the ball, the run game has kept on rolling.

It simply hasn’t this season. Advanced statistics show the same decline the more traditional ones do. The Tigers rank 90th nationally in rushing S&P+ (SB Nation’s Bill Connolly’s measure of efficiency and explosiveness) after finishing last season 36th.

Football Outsiders measures opportunity rate (the percentage of carries where 4 yards are available that gain at least 4 yards), power success rate (percentage of runs on third or fourth down with 2 yards or less to go that achieve a first down or touchdown) and stuff rate (percentage of carries where running backs are stopped at or before the line of scrimmage).

Last season, Auburn had an opportunity rate of 38.8 percent (64th nationally), power success rate of 80.6 percent (fifth) and stuff rate of 14.8 percent (ninth). This year, the Tigers’ opportunity rate is higher (48.1 percent, 57th nationally), but their power success rate has dropped to 70.8 percent (69th) and stuff rate has gone up to 17.7 percent (46th).

In layman’s terms, when the offensive line has done its job this season, Auburn has been able to turn that play into a successful rush. But an offensive line that entered the season with just 40 career starts (with 20 of those coming from Jack Driscoll at UMass) hasn’t done its job as often.

Those struggles have affected the entire offense. Auburn has run the ball 56 times on third down this season and has gotten a first down only 20 of those attempts, which is a conversion rate of 35.7 percent. Last year, it recorded a first down on 67 of 102 third-down rushing attempts, or 65.7 percent.

Overall, the Tigers rank second-to-last in the SEC converting 35.6 percent of third downs. Because they're not extending drives, they rank second-to-last in time of possession, averaging just a shade over 26 minutes per game. Their 26.5 points per game rank ninth in the SEC and would be the program's lowest since 2012 (18.7).

Injuries at running back certainly haven’t helped. JaTarvious Whitlow has been by far the Tigers’ best rusher when healthy, turning a team-high 117 attempts into a team-leading 668 yards. His 5.7 yards per carry is higher than Johnson’s mark of 4.8 last season. But whereas Johnson averaged nearly 24 carries per game last season, Whitlow is averaging fewer than 12.

Whitlow suffered a left shoulder injury Sept. 29 against Southern Miss that hampered him during losses to Mississippi State and Tennessee. He looked to be back to full strength during a 19-carry, 170-yard breakout game in Oxford, but he suffered an ankle injury in the fourth quarter and has been limited to just 42 yards on 17 carries since.

The redshirt freshman would need to average 111 yards over Auburn's final three games to keep alive the program's nine-season streak of having a 1,000-yard rusher.

“He wasn’t 100 percent, but he’s better than he was last week,” Malzahn said after the loss at Georgia. “He wanted to play and he fought hard, and the one thing I’ll say is our guys fought, our guys kept fighting and they’re going to continue to do that.”

Still, Auburn doesn’t have many options to turn to behind Whitlow. Kam Martin is also dealing with an injury and hasn’t recorded a carry in either of the last two games. Shaun Shivers is the healthiest of the group, but he has recorded more than five carries in a game just three times this season. Malik Miller is just a situational player, and coaches have been reluctant to put reigning Alabama Mr. Football Asa Martin on the field for reasons they have not disclosed.

That’s part of why the Tigers didn’t run much in Athens. That 5.1 yard-per-carry average doesn’t tell the whole story. Of Auburn’s 107 rush yards, 55 came on one 30-yard rush from Shivers and two fourth-quarter scrambles of 10 and 15 yards from quarterback Jarrett Stidham. The team’s other 17 carries, including all nine of Whitlow’s, averaged 3.1 yards, and that doesn’t include any sack yardage.

With 10 games down and only three left to play (two in the regular season, one of which is at No. 1 Alabama, plus a bowl), Auburn is running out of time to make the improvements Malzahn has been requesting since way back in Week 1.

“That’s our challenge,” Malzahn said. “Whether it’s get a little more creative in the run game or do things a little bit different or not do some of the things as much, all those things are on deck and all those things are being considered. The bottom line is we’ve got to run the football better. We’ve taken great pride in that in the past.”